Media delivery of both audio and video programming relies heavily on the ability to provide crossfades, blends and other processing or interstitial effects, to both enhance the user experience and to provide high quality delivery to the customer.
In a traditional broadcast model, such as, for example, FM radio, or a national television network, these kinds of effects are typically generated at the broadcast station or headend, typically by an automation system. This approach to effect insertion works well because all users receive the same broadcast stream, and complex effects can be processed, implemented and tightly controlled at a single location. Moreover, the amount of processing required is both constant for a given effect and independent of the number of end users.
With modern multimedia delivery, especially systems that deliver a personalized experience, where each user receives different programming or content that (i) varies with time relative to all other users, and that (ii) is personalized, to a greater or lesser degree, for each user, this traditional model does not work. In a personalized service, all users receive a custom set of audio or video elements usually based on a customized playlist.
If blends, interstitial effects, processing or cross fading are required or desired between successive media elements in such a personalized stream, one approach is to push the burden of processing the effect or crossfade to the client device, including the responsibility to both manage the download of the various elements needed, with sufficient lead time. This approach is often sub optimal. Not all client devices may be capable of processing complex effects to deliver a high-quality user experience, for a variety of reasons. For example, some devices may not be capable of such processing because of processing power, memory size, power or other limitations of processing effects. Other devices may have been the zenith of their class at one time, but are now legacy devices, and as techniques for on device cross fading advance, their capabilities are no longer sufficient. This can easily lead to a spectrum of unsatisfactory user experiences.
What are thus needed in the art are systems and methods to address these problems of the prior art so as to implement and facilitate cross-fading, interstitials and other effects/processing of two or more media elements from the server side, and have the ultimate result easily effected and implemented on the downstream device.